My Most Inspiring Qur'an Ayat

 My Most Inspiring Qur’an Ayat

M. Bakri Musa

May 31, 2026

Updated excerpt from my Qur’an, Hadith And Hikayat: Exercises In Critical Thinking (2021)

The intellectual exercises I had with those Malay undergraduates forced a personal reckoning. They made me ponder a deceptively simple yet profound question: What Qur’anic verse inspires me most, and why?

I began reading the Qur’an long before I ever stepped foot into a formal classroom. Like most Malay boys of my generation (more so today), it was a ritual of rote learning. I merely memorized the Arabic script without the foggiest idea of what those ancient sounds actually meant. I could only appreciate their aural beauty, their rolling, hypnotic cadence, and their inner, majestic rhythm.

Years later as an adult in the West, my relationship with the Holy text shifted. I began reading various English translations, including—yes—jaundiced, polemical versions written by Orientalists intent on denigrating our Holy Book. Yet, despite a lifetime of reading, until that visceral session with those students, I had never truly paused to deliberate on which ayat (verse) anchored my personal worldview.

After much reflection and repeated readings, I chose this deceptively brief imperative:

       الأمر بالمَعْرُوف والنَهي عن المُنْكَر‎

(Al-amr bil-ma'ruf wa n-nahyu 'ani l-munkar). Approximate translation: Command good; forbid evil.

This ayat first appears in Surah Al-Imran (3:104): “Let there be among you a community calling to the good, enjoining right, and forbidding wrong. It is they who shall prosper.” This theme is repeated twice more in that same Surah (110 and 114), twice in Surah At-Tawbah (9:71 and 9:112), and once each in Surah Al-A'raf (7:157), Surah Al-Hajj (22:41), and Surah Luqman (31:17). A total of eight from over 6,000 verses. When the Divine Author repeats Himself with such architectural consistency, the discerning reader must pay attention.

The exercises with those students proved a vital pedagogical point, forcing them to view the Qur’an from an entirely different perspective. An analytical one that grants them a vastly superior appreciation—if not a profound understanding—of the text. The Qur’an, like any piece of great, timeless literature, impacts its readers in highly unique, deeply personal ways.

Looking at the world from alternative perspectives is not a luxury; it is the first and necessary step in critical thinking. It shatters complacency. It prompts one to ask sharper questions, often along entirely new trajectories of thought, inevitably expanding one’s intellectual horizons.

That persistent Qur’anic refrain to command good and forbid evil should not be the end of a conversation, but the trigger for a host of ensuing inquiries. The most obvious, of course, is parsing the exact meaning of “good” and “evil.”

Is morality a strict, binary, either/or proposition? If an action is not distinctly good, must it necessarily, ipso facto, be bad? Or are we dealing with a nuanced spectrum containing a vast neutral zone—spaces where an action is neither explicitly righteous nor wicked, but perhaps merely “less bad” or “more optimal” than the alternatives?

Traditional Malay wisdom holds that, at times, one must be cruel to be kind. Sayangkan anak tangan-tangankan—indulge and spoil your child now, and you will surely inherit a devil when he grows up. Could the same dynamic be operative when evaluating social and political policies? Must we sometimes endure a temporary, necessary “bad” to achieve a greater, enduring “good” later?

We all agree that killing is inherently evil. But would assassinating Adolf Hitler in 1933 have been an act of evil? If we deem it good, would it have been even better, more moral, to have done so preemptively before he ever seized power thus saving even more lives?

We do not need to drown in prolonged, dense philosophical discourses on ethics to appreciate the deep complexities and subtleties of morality. Even if we retreat to a rigid theological sanctuary—arguing that “good” is simply that which is approved by God, while “bad” is what He forbids—we immediately bump into the classic Euthyphro dilemma: Which comes first? Is an action good simply because Allah favors it, or does Allah favor it precisely because the action is inherently good?

Untangling this relationship between cause and effect is one of the most beguiling and critical tasks in intellectual life. Consider a familiar oft-cited local example: Are Malays economically lagging because we are inherently “lazy,” as former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad never fails to remind us? Or are we “lazy” because we have historically been trapped in poverty, left malnourished, and thus lacking physical vigor? Alternatively, is this perceived lethargy merely a rational economic response? Why should a paddy farmer or a rubber tapper sweat blood when institutional frameworks ensure he will never receive a proper, just reward for his labor? Why work hard when the socioeconomic system ensures there is nothing, or very little, to show for your efforts?

Merely posing these disruptive questions forces us to analyze reality with deliberate care before blindly swallowing the ready-made conclusions of others—especially those less enlightened, regardless of how high a pedestal they occupy in our feudal social hierarchy.

“Command good and forbid evil” is the raw essence of the Qur’an; the rest of the text, historical contexts, and theological treatises are mere commentaries. You cannot be a good Muslim—or indeed, a decent human being—if your life is defined by cruelty, cheating, corruption, or injustice.

We pray five times a day as a conscious, rigorous psychological conditioning mechanism to remind ourselves of the Divine, so that we do not commit the terrestrial atrocities He abhors. To pray without this cognitive engagement reduces the act to an empty, hollow ritualism. It becomes at best mere gymnastics—excellent exercise for your knee and hip joints, no doubt, alongside the cheap vanity of sporting a dark zabiba (prayer bump) on your forehead to signal your piety to neighbors, but functionally useless for the soul.

Next:  The Doing “Good” With Ramadan Fasting